Looks Like the “Ender’s Game” Adaptation is Moving Forward: Casting Call Announced

We reported on the acquisition of rights to make a film adaptation of the scifi staple “Ender’s Game”, but as many have learned, having your story acquired in Hollywood doesn’t guarantee that the project will move ahead. However, we’ve gotten a promising sign that this particular film will be headed into production some time soon: io9 got their hands on casting call sheets for ten major characters from the book/upcoming movie and has reported on each.

Here’s what io9 had to report on the casting call for Ender:

Ender Wiggin: He’s depicted as smart and sensitive, but also incredibly ruthless. And he’s ten years old — older than in the book, but not as old as Hollywood was trying to make him at one point. There are a few scenes where he worries about being like his cut-throat brother Peter, and confides in his sister Valentine. Just like in the book, he dishes out a rough treatment to Bonzo Madrid, his former platoon leader, when Bonzo tries to bully him too much. And then he feels bad about it. The screenplay also includes some scenes where Ender has weird nightmares about the buggers — and he tries to understand where the buggers are coming from, and what their children are like. Ender is pissed at Graff because he keeps changing the rules in the war “exercises.”

The scene where Ender finds out that his final victory was not, in fact, a game is pretty intense, and features Ender and Graff both trying to talk at the same time. Ender is saying “They came to establish a colony, we chased them away… in fifty years they have never returned,” while Graff is saying, “It makes no difference now,” and then Ender is saying “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” at the same time as Graff is saying “What are you talking about?” Finally, Ender is saying “I will bear the shame of this xenocide forever,” at the same moment as Graff is saying, “You will be remembered as a hero.” It ends with Ender getting an injection, knocking him out.

Reports also state that Orson Scott Card wrote the film’s initial screenplay draft, which was then tweaked by Star Trek writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, with additional changes made by the film’s director Gavin Hood. io9 has stated that they were happy with what they read — solid and true to the book.

About Author

Mike Macauley is the founder and editor in chief of Lytherus.com. He also founded and runs Shurtugal.com, the official Inheritance Cycle community, and published his book, The Inheritance Almanac, in 2011. Mike can be found on Twitter at @mikemacauley.

I don’t know. . . I’m a bit leery about making a movie on Ender’s Game. A lot of it is what’s going in Ender’s head, things that can’t be conveyed on screen. Its one thing I thought was particularly strong about the book.

Gavin

My thoughts exactly. The internal dialogue is very important, and it’s kind of hard to portray that with a movie. There are ways to do this, but usually it just sounds like narrating, which is probably not something they are going to do. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Summit Entertainment had better tread lightly, though. If they screw up, they will NEVER hear the end of it.

Terryoke1

All indications are the script will combine EG and Ender’s Shadow, basically allowing Bean and Petra to “narrate” the story and not just feature long shots of Ender thinking really hard.

Gavin

That actually makes a lot of sense. Bean and Petra WOULD be the ones to narrate, now that I think about it. If it’s going to be a combination of the two books though, I wonder if they’ll show Bean’s growing up on the streets of Rotterdam. I know they won’t show him discovering the plot twist, though.

http://profiles.google.com/torpealex Alexander Dykstra

I agree with Shadowwriter’s comment: Making the movie even a tad like Ender’s Shadow will be incredibly difficult to do correctly, considering Bean’s self-narration and thought processes in the book. I can understand how the script writers would like the idea of Bean and Petra narrating, but no amount of voice-overs are going to make the film even close to what any of the books were like.
Our best hope is probably that the film will draw from many of the books’ ideas while using an approach better suited for the silver screen. Think ‘Watership Down’- the movie and the book varied wildly but both were fairly successful while keeping some continuity between the two mediums.

Anonymous

I read the book in 1986 – amazing that hollywood has taken all this time to get a good book to movie production. Seeing all the second rate stuff the movie industry churns out every year, they should start paying more attention to the award winners (Hugo Awards, etc) – and use those awards (and book sales) as a good place to get new (and profit generating) stories!

Elphiebelphie

i knew that this would eventually be made into a movie but, didn’t know that they were actually doing it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!